It wasn’t a thing back then, but it can be now
Many people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond are discovering that therapy later in life can offer unexpected improvements to their emotional wellbeing. Not because something is broken, but because something inside is craving more space. From grief support over 50s to burnout recovery in midlife, starting therapy can be less about “fixing” and more about making room to feel, reflect and reconnect.
Fluffy cushions, comfy sofas, candles that smell proper lush and a big old smile from the Self Space Front of House team make walking in for therapy a bit easier. But knowing we’re going to unsettle the dust, talk about feelings, and face a therapist can be hard. It can be really off-putting.
Especially when we’re doing it for the first time. When we’ve lived a whole life, got comfortable in our discomfort, stuffed it all under the carpet and moved on from our losses. When we’re quietly wondering whether this is our lot, whether the tattered tie that holds our relationship together is meant to keep fraying until it just falls apart.
“I don’t know what I’d even talk about in therapy.”
“I’ve survived this long, haven’t I?”
“We didn’t grow up with all this mental health stuff. We just got on with it.”
Words we’ve heard in workshops, in training, in therapy, from managers, grandparents, parents and mentors. These things we’ve heard from people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s who are thoughtful, kind and accomplished. From people who’ve built companies and families, supported communities, cared for partners, cared for parents, managed teams, run marathons, survived recessions and redundancies. People who have, without question, coped. Coping is cool. However, the corrosive impact of just coping is much more profound at ten years than at three months (Deary, 2024, p.89). We know that a lifetime of coping can create some serious wear and tear on the mind and body.
Generational Differences in Mental Health
Baby Boomers were raised in the aftermath of war and rationing, taught to prioritise stability and keep emotions in check. Generation X, sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials, came of age in a time of latchkey independence, economic uncertainty, and emotional ambivalence. They often grew up in households where feelings were neither spoken about nor really recognised.
For both generations, the cultural script was clear: don’t make a fuss. Be useful. Push through. Privacy is maturity. Emotions are risky. If you’re struggling, work harder. And whatever you do, don’t talk about it.
And for some, therapy wasn’t just unavailable, it wasn’t safe. For older people from marginalised backgrounds, the idea of trusting a stranger with your story might still feel risky. The weight of that memory might make opening the door to therapy feel heavier, stickier, still inaccessible.
New Conversations About Therapy Later in Life
But something’s shifting, right? The noise around mental health is getting louder. It’s talked about on the tele, discussed in HR meetings, and feelings are shared openly and often without shame by the young. Which, when you’ve never spoken about emotions openly before, can be quite confronting. Maybe even a little bit annoying.
Therapy is no longer just the domain of the neurotic or the privileged. Counselling is not a last resort. Increasingly, it’s being reframed as a tool for reflection, meaning-making, and generational repair. Something once seen as indulgent is now recognised as responsible; a way to disrupt inherited patterns before they harden in our relationships, workplaces, and health.
Many people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s are now quietly starting therapy for the first time. Some come because of burnout recovery in midlife. For some, because they’re lonely looking at their empty nest. Some because they can no longer outrun the long arm of grief. And some come after encouragement from a younger relative, but stay because they finally feel the benefit.
These are people who, for the first time, are learning how to turn towards themselves with kindness rather than criticism. Not because something is broken. But because something inside them is craving more space to breathe, reflect, consider and perhaps change behaviour.
That is what therapy can offer. The nugget of reflection that begins in a Self Space workshop can lead to a course of therapy, which can create inner space and, over time, a looser grip on the sometimes haunting thoughts and feelings that have held us back for so long.
Why Starting Therapy Later in Life Can Feel Hard
If you’ve never tried therapy before, there are real embedded reasons why turning up for a session might feel impossible:
- Emotional stoicism was rewarded. Expressing emotion was often punished or pathologised.
- Self-neglect was normalised. Especially among women, carers, leaders, and parents.
- Mental health conversations were cloaked in shame. People weren’t told they had inner worlds. They were told to be grateful.
- Comparison killed permission. “Other people had it worse” becomes a barrier to healing.
The language can feel unfamiliar. Words like “triggered”, “trauma”, “boundaries”, “inner child” and “compassion” can, quite honestly, sound like self-indulgent nonsense. But when we break them down and learn what they actually mean, they can offer us a new kind of lexicon. One that helps name the tricky, tangled things we’ve felt throughout our lives but never quite found the words for.
What Therapy Can Offer Older Adults
For Gen Xers and Boomers, therapy can be a radical act and a chance to:
- Develop a new relationship with the past. Not to dwell, but to understand.
- Create some proper self-empathy. Not in a cutesy, Instagram-quote kind of way, but as a real internal skill.
- Repair relationships. With adult children, partners, friends, or siblings, through deeper emotional literacy.
- Give themselves something they never got—from parents, teachers, society. Recognition. Permission. Language.
And perhaps most profoundly, a chance to meet ourselves differently, in a life stage where so much is changing. Retirement, health, identity and relevance are all rich, complex transitions that might be showing up. Therapy can make space for them to be felt, not just managed.
The point of therapy, the point of talking to a stranger for 50 minutes every week becomes more apparent when we start to unpick and unpack the knotty, complicated dynamics we’ve been living with. When the feelings that we’ve kept locked within have the opportunity to be expressed and processed. Yes, we might feel anger, pain, loss and a bunch of other emotions, but we also make space to see the beauty in the day-to-day. Without the unanswered questions weighing us down, we might begin to notice and appreciate the leaves on the trees turning from lush green to rusty red, the taste of a good brew, the bright smile of the girl in the coffee shop, the bubbling sound of a toddler’s laugh.
The Role of the Young
If you’re on the younger side, maybe you’ve noticed a parent, a manager, or a friend circling the idea of therapy with uncertainty or resistance. If you do, you can offer support without being patronising:
- Lead by invitation, not instruction. And try not to be a smug arse about it. Instead of saying “You need therapy,” try: “I’ve found it really helpful, and I wondered whether it might be something you might explore.”
- Respect their pace. You might be 10 years deep into self-awareness. They might be opening this door for the first time. Respect that, and don’t push it if they pass up on the idea with a hard no. Sometimes defensiveness is fear in disguise.
- Remember, you can’t make someone go to therapy. If they’re forced, it just won’t work.
- Affirm their strength. Going to therapy after a lifetime of silence is not small. It is seismic. It takes guts to look inward after decades of looking out for others.
There is grief in growing older, not just for the people we’ve lost, but for the versions of ourselves we used to be. Maybe we’ve lost our routine, our purpose. Maybe we used to feel sexy. Maybe we miss sex. Maybe our physical vulnerabilities hold us back in ways we’ve never experienced before. Therapy can help us honour who we’ve been, and explore who we might still become.
So many people are currently waking up to their emotional inheritance. They are opening their eyes to the dents, discomfort and impact of the baggage they’ve had to carry. A good therapist will not tell you what to do or dredge up painful memories for fun. They’ll get in the trenches with you, and they won’t judge. They’ll help you make sense of what’s been and what’s next. That therapeutic relationship can be profoundly healing.
And maybe you don’t deep dive immediately. If you’re sniffing out the idea of therapy, but still hesitant, maybe start with a taster session, a single 50-minute chat, or a workshop at Self Space Social.
In 2025, therapy is not just a young person’s game. It’s not too late. You’re not too much and you’re not alone. You’ve survived. And when you’re ready, therapy might be the place where you can start to soften.
References:
Deary, V., 2024. How we break: Navigating the wear and tear of living. London: Allen Lane, p.89.